Charlie's Dragons
by The Unstoppable Hug Machine
Summary: Charlie Weasley's heart is filled with dragons. A series of drabbles.
1. Chapter 1

You got your first dragon when you was four years old, a beautiful Common Welsh Green. It was covered in flocked felt and roared melodiously as it sat in your palm. Your auntie had brought it back as a present with her from her summer holidays in Snowdonia. She promised you that she'd seen the real thing there and you sat rapt as she told you how magnificent it was, how very green and how very big (bigger than all the Burrow, your mum, dad, uncle, aunt and brother combined). You slept with it near your head for weeks and cried when your mum took it away because your little brother was being kept awake.

You'd always been a tough little boy and so it broke your mum's heart to see you cry. She gave you a picture book the next day--The Young Wizard's Field Guide to the Dragons Of Greater Europe. You brought it with you everywhere you went --which as mostly outside and almost as far away as you could get on two feet.

One day you were especially far away and it started to rain, thick droplets hitting over the yellow pages, dark spots spreading over the beautiful drawings of graceful Antipodean Opaleyes and the fierce Peruvian Vipertooths. You panicked and slipped on a sodden patch of grass, the book opening and falling page-wise into a mud puddle. Panic made way to despair and frustration. _Your book was surely ruined and all the dragons in the pictures that had become some of your best friends would-- _ and then the book began to warm up, warmer and warmer until it felt like that time you'd had a fever and puked your guts out except books don't get fevers and puke their guts out. They just get warm until they dry off, the mud falling away like a week's worth of dust.

You brought your book back clean, though the same couldn't be said for you. Your mother nearly punished you that day, until you told her what happened, then she hugged you and kissed you and fetched the good firewhisky out of the cellar. "Arthur! Charlie's found his magic!"


	2. Chapter 2

You weren't supposed to be doing what you were doing. Worse yet, you were thirteen --old enough to feel guilty when you knew you were breaking the rules. But then, you'd spent the better part of your winter holiday discreetly feeding Hagrid's particularly bothersome litter of baby Nifflers for this chance and you weren't about to let a funny tight little ball of feeling in your belly stop you. So you told your mum (and your entire common room) that you simply were going to Hogsmeade just like everyone else was, leaving out the bit about the black-market dragon auction just outside the outskirts of the slummier part of town.

You nodded respectfully toward the greasy, foreign-looking wizard at the entrance, trying your best to look grown-up without nervously eyeing the large hand-scrawled sign reading "no underaged's allowed". It was a faded, thread-bare tent with , singed straw lining the ground, under a most-certainly illegal variant of an Unplottable charm. A large crate of shining black lumps that you immedielty recognized as Norwgien Ridgeback eggs stood near the door, but Hagrid's meaty hand prodded you on. "Wait'll yeh see 'er, Charlie."

And then-- there she was. A beautiful juvenile Hebridean Black in a heavily-charmed, heavily-rusted cage. Your heart pounded as you approached, with all the wonder of a thirteen year old boy who'd never seen a dragon in real life before. She backed away fearfully, cramping into a corner and hoarsley hissing as you approached. "Ge' back, Charlie. Yeh can' trust the magic o' the likes o' these. Dodgy lo', all o' them."

The Hebridean Black was the final thing to be placed on the auction block. Most of the bidders had stayed until the end, murmuring excitedly as the sedated dragon was lead out on a harness. She was so close to you, you could have counted her scales. Your heart felt like cracked a little when you saw the scars on her hide though where one too many stunning charms had hit her. Alarmed, you looked up at Hagrid, who seemed to have not noticed. He looked down at you, winking. "Grea' affair, eh?" You cringed to see her jaws pried open, her wings and hide roughly assailed with pricking charms as they tested for her health and reaction time. The dragon sold for a good price, but as she was led away, you felt more grown-up than you'd like.


	3. Chapter 3

You could be great, they were saying. You could be a star and play for England. You had the talent, and for a while, you had the drive. You'd practice every day in the summer at the paddock near the Burrow --your mum would've liked to have started a pumpkin patch there, but even she respected your talent and put aside her wishes so the star seeker of the Gryffindor team could practice.  
You were fast and fierce and keen and could get the snitch in ten minutes flat. At least, that's how you won the first match and it was a decidedly impressive feat. It took a bit longer after that, of course. But these days, it's taking you longer and longer. You're flying higher and higher and going further and further, the patchwork countryside spreading out beneath you ever wider. There's an awful lot you've missed, when all you've wanted to see is a tiny golden ball.

You're still telling yourself you're really practicing when you first see him, even if you swoop down without hesitence, without a single thought to the long-gone snitch. A male Common Welsh Green, unusually out-of-range and elderly. Your ached a little when you saw how thin he was, clearly near the end of his life. He barely stirred when you brought him a lamb, discreetly plucked out of a nearby field belonging to a Muggle neighbor.

You mourned quietly until the next day, when you again eagerly abandoned practice to see him again. He was still there, but the lamb wasn't. He looked a little stronger, his eyes gleamed a little brighter. He even let out a thin thread of flame at the sight of you.

Grinning, you flew once again to the Muggle neighbor's field.

You could be great, after all.


	4. Chapter 4

"_Charles_?"

"It sounds so grown-up, doesn't it? Bit of a nice ring to it, too. So, Bill tells me you've been chatting with this Hufflepuff girl? Nymphadora, was it?"

"_Tonks_ is a friend, mum. Nothing more."

"Does Nympha--_Tonks_ like your hair?"

"I doubt she's noticed."

"Then why not get a bit of a trim? It'd only take a minute, Charles Then you'd be on your way and--"

"Sorry, mum."

"You're really going to do this business, then? With Romania?"

"And the dragons, yes."

"You won't be here for summer holiday at all?"

"I've told you mum, we're leaving right after this term ends."

"Tell me about the dragons again."

"Mostly Romanian Longhorns. Some Swedish Short-Snouts and Ukrainian Ironbellys, of course. There should even be a Liondragon by the time I get there, I'm really looking forward to that--. Mum? Are you okay?"

"I just like hearing you talk, Charlie."


End file.
